I mean. the theme is very similar. dark and gothic but thats not really half of it. the biggest thing is the fact that each enemy felt dangerous(for the most part) and combat was very much tied to whatever weapon you had.

but the biggest similarity is the boss fights. I mean, castlevania is the melee dodge and then attack boss fight kind of game. you won't win anything buy running at bosses and hitting them mindlessly. you have to play defensively. in dark souls its mostly a defensive game where you make your attack after a successful defensive movie most of the time.

outside of the platforming which is missing from souls games. the whole enemy layout and boss fights is how a castlevania plays. enemies scattered around areas in the game with no context obviously its just expected to have these creatures in such a world. and boss fights are pretty much a non scripted room where you have to recognize patterns of mostly melee attacks .

Enemies in Castlevania are generally not dangerous. In the very early Castlevania games there were those skeletons throwing bones at you near pitfalls, but a lot of 8-bit and to some extent 16-bit games were designed to be very arcade-like and unforgiving. No continues or saves, etc.But if you play something like Symphony of the Night (and beyond), you'd rarely, if ever, encounter enemies that give you the kind of pause and caution that a Souls enemy do.

Your description of how you approach bosses can be applied to a massive amount of games as well. Megaman for example.

Enemies in Castlevania are generally not dangerous. In the very early Castlevania games there were those skeletons throwing bones at you near pitfalls, but a lot of 8-bit and to some extent 16-bit games were designed to be very arcade-like and unforgiving. No continues or saves, etc.But if you play something like Symphony of the Night (and beyond), you'd rarely, if ever, encounter enemies that give you the kind of pause and caution that a Souls enemy do.

Your description of how you approach bosses can be applied to a massive amount of games as well. Megaman for example.

am talking about 3d games that are slow. castlevania games are very slow paced similar to dark souls.

and by dangerous I meant they can potentially do a lot of damage. I mean in dark souls you kill the goons in two hits or something like that. as long as you are careful that is. but if you get careless you can easily get staggered and chain damaged by them

in castlevania a goon can easily hit you while jumping and ruin your day.

Now that you mention it, the first Dark Souls does resemble a mix between NES Castlevania where combat was all about maneuvering and commiting to your actions, and Symphony of the Night which was more focused on metroid-esque exploration. Of course, this is only if you disregard plot and worldbuilding which has a completely different style in both franchises

VGPolyglot said:Well, Castlevania had a heavy focus on platforming which I think is not entirely replicated in Dark Souls.

yes thats the missing part but. in 3d games unless your mainly a platformer games have no platforming 95% of the time

the lords of shadow castlevanias and few of the other ones seem like crappy hack n slash games compared to the old castlevanias that are all about playing defensively and do a lot of damage with more precise well timed attacks.